John Saul - In the Dark of the Night

THOUGH ERIC HAD spent a week at Phantom Lake last summer, everything looked a lot better to him this year. Since the storm had cleared, the weather had steadily improved, and there wasn’t a trace of the humidity that had begun smothering Evanston as they left that morning. But it wasn’t just the weather that was different; the whole village looked better than he remembered it. Coming in from the south, they’d turned right at the flashing red light — which he didn’t remember at all — and half a mile farther they were in the center of town.

To the right was the village itself; to the left, a long narrow park lay between the road and the lakeshore, widening out at the eastern end to a large pavilion built over the water. The buildings of the village, brightly painted and in perfect condition, seemed lifted directly out of a previous century.

“It looks like a movie set,” his father said.

“Maybe it is,” his mother replied. “Maybe they only put it up for the summer, and stow it away in a warehouse somewhere all winter.”

“Can they do that?” Marci piped, then reddened as Eric rolled his eyes and groaned. “Well, they could, couldn’t they?” she insisted in a futile attempt at recovery.

“I was only kidding, honey,” her mother said.

Turning back to the window, Eric gazed out at the summer party going on in the park. The swimming beach to the west of the pavilion was filled with splashing kids and dogs, and every kid in the water seemed to have either an air mattress or some other kind of floating toy. Farther out, beyond a rope limiting the swimming area, ski boats crisscrossed the water, some of them with Jet Skis playing in their wake. There were enough blankets spread out on the huge expanse of grass behind the beach to turn the lawn into a giant patchwork quilt, and at least half a dozen barbecue fires were burning.

And there were girls everywhere. In the water, on the lawn, and on the bike path at the edge of the road. “I love it here,” Eric heard Marci say, but he didn’t take his eyes off a blonde on Rollerblades who was wearing nothing but a bikini.

“So do I,” he replied, with a note in his voice that made his mother turn around, see what he was looking at, and glare at him.

“Eyes front,” she said.

“It doesn’t hurt to look,” his father said.

“Look at what?” Marci asked.

“Never you mind,” her mother said. Then, to distract the little girl from pushing the subject, she pointed out the window on the other side of the car. “Look, an old-fashioned ice cream shop!”

They were in the heart of the village now, and next to the ice cream and candy stores they saw a small movie theater, a cluster of T-shirt shops, and a fish-’n’-chips restaurant. In the next block there was a tiny pharmacy, a dry cleaner, a small courtyard complex that seemed to be occupied by nothing but art galleries and gift shops, and an antiques store.

Merrill pointed to the next street. “Third Street,” she said. “That’s where we turn, and the real estate office should be on the right.”

Seconds after Dan slid the Lexus into a spot right in front of Rita Henderson’s office, the entire family was on the sidewalk, stretching. “This’ll take a few minutes,” Dan told Eric. “Why don’t you and your sister take Moxie for a walk?”

Marci got the leash out of the car, opened the dog’s kennel cab, and had just hooked the leash onto Moxie’s collar when the dog managed to slip past her and leap to the sidewalk. Moxie shook himself violently, then strained at his leash, trying to search out a patch of grass. Marci half ran after him, with Eric after her, the two of them following the dog toward the park. No sooner had they crossed Main Street than Moxie started to sniff, decided on a spot, and squatted.

As Eric and Marci waited for the dog to finish his business, two boys about Eric’s age stopped on the sidewalk a few yards from them and stared at him.

Eric hesitated. Did he know them? Had he met them last summer when he was staying with the Newells? “Hi,” he finally said, “I’m Eric Brewster.”

“Who cares?” the shorter boy replied.

The uncertainty on Eric’s face dissolved into a frown. “Is something wrong?”

The taller one shrugged. “Dunno yet.”

Moxie, no longer squatting, was crouched at Marci’s feet, a low warning growl rumbling in his throat.

“C’mon, Marce,” Eric said. “Let’s—”

Before he could finish, the bigger of the two boys spoke. “Aren’t you going to pick up after your dog?” he demanded, his eyes narrowing as they fixed on Eric.

Eric saw Marci looking up at him, and was sure she was about to burst into tears. “We’re going to pick it up,” he said. “I’ve just got to get a bag.”

“Yeah, right,” the other one said. “If you were gonna pick it up, you’d’ve brought a bag.”

“We just got here—” Eric began.

“Who even wants you here at all?” the boy interrupted. “So pick up after you’re damn dog, okay?”

A knot of anger forming in his belly, Eric took his handkerchief out of his back pocket and picked up Moxie’s droppings. As the two boys watched, he looked around, spotted a trash barrel, and dropped them in. Not wanting to put the handkerchief back in his pocket, he dropped that into the barrel, too, and turned back toward the two boys.

They were already halfway down the block, laughing loudly. As Eric watched, one of them wheeled around and raised a hand, middle finger erect. “Asshole!” he yelled. “Who needs you? Why don’t you go back wherever you came from?”

Eric’s jaw clenched but he said nothing. Still he knew he wouldn’t forget. The faces of those two boys — and their words — were burned into his memory. And if they wanted to start something—

He cut the thought off, telling himself they weren’t going to start anything. Yet even as he tried to reassure himself, he knew he was wrong.

They had started something, and if they pushed it, Eric knew what would happen. Kent would want to finish it, and in the end, he and Tad — neither of whom had ever been much for fighting — would back him up.

And the two boys, whoever they were, would be sorry.

AHALF HOUR LATER the Brewsters drove around the last bend in the freshly graveled drive and found themselves staring at the dark stone facade of Pinecrest.

Merrill gasped in spite of herself. “Good lord,” she breathed. “Are you sure this is it?” But even as she asked, she knew this was, indeed, the house they’d rented, though it looked much larger than it had in the e-mail attachment.

“Of course this is it,” Eric said from the backseat. In fact, he’d seen it before, if only briefly, and only from down at the lake, last summer. “Pretty great house, huh?”

“It looks like a witch’s house,” Marci declared, her voice quavering and her words echoing what Merrill had been thinking as she’d gazed at the house at the end of the drive. Her first impression when she saw it on Ellen Newell’s computer was that the house looked haunted. As she gazed at it now, nothing she saw changed that impression; in fact, it looked even more like a haunted house.

“Don’t be an idiot, Marci,” Eric said, glaring at his sister. “It’s cool. In fact, this might be the coolest house on the lake.”

“Either way, it’s ours for the summer,” Dan Brewster said as he braked the car to a stop at the foot of the front steps. “Let’s unload the car, unpack everything, and then go exploring.”

He popped the hatch and turned off the engine. Eric was out of the car before the engine even died, but Merrill was still gazing through the window.